Page 69 of The Girls in the Snow

“It was a long time ago, and with everything being transferred from paper to digital, things could have been lost,” Courtney said. “Did you do any drugs that night?

“That’s one road I didn’t go down.” There was no evidence anyone had liquid ecstasy at the party. She was making too many wild assumptions, and if Rory hadn’t hinted at it, Nikki never would have considered the idea.

“Then I don’t think you have anything to worry about,” Courtney said. “It’s on record that you passed the field test. The rest is on the police.”

“I still want to know what happened to the tox test.” Maybe she hadn’t actually been drugged, but the tox report instead showed her blood alcohol level was still high enough to be an issue on the stand. That would have made Hardin look foolish, and it would have put the case against Mark in jeopardy.

“I’ve got a friend in records. I can ask her to look for the test. In a perfect system, all results from the hospital labs should be entered into the state database.”

“Can you trust her not to go to the media?”

Courtney nodded. “I wouldn’t ask her if I didn’t.”

“Then do it. Just keep everything between us.”

“Are you starting to think Mark could be innocent?”

“I don’t know, but I’m starting to wonder if I put my trust in the right people back then. I was scared, I was shocked, I’d just lost my parents.” The implications made Nikki’s stomach turn. If Mark Todd was truly innocent, he was just as much of a victim as Nikki. She’d known Mark since they were kids. Why hadn’t she ever stopped to consider his side of the story?

Because she’d never considered a police officer could lie. And she’d never allowed herself to think about that night or the days following. She’d put what happened in a box and never thought about it again.

“Is he telling the truth?” Confusion fogged up her brain. She’d been drinking, laughing, dancing. And then everything blurred into darkness. Her head felt like it was full of cotton.

“Come on, Nik. What do you think? It’s your own fault. You were all over him earlier, anyway.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

John rolled his eyes. “Everyone here saw it.”

She slapped him, maybe. People laughed; everyone was watching. And then what?

“Nikki.” Courtney’s voice brought her back from her memory. “We’ll figure this out. Once we’ve caught our killer, you’ll have all the time in the world to revisit your parents’ case.”

Nikki appreciated Courtney’s support, but she wasn’t sure she could stay focused. “Thanks for listening.”

“Liam just texted me. He said he was trying to get a hold of you,” Courtney said. “Remember Miller saying he got something good at the club before everything went down?”

Nikki’s head felt like a fifty-pound weight as she nodded.

“You’re not going to like it.”

Nikki sat up straight, adrenaline trickling through her system. “What is it?”

“Two of the morning shift dancers recognized John Banks. He’s a regular.”

Twenty-Five

Roan Pharmaceuticals was on the north end of the Minneapolis metro area. Tucked between two large interstates, the location provided relative privacy in the middle of a high traffic area. Nikki circled the campus in search of Liam’s silver Prius. He’d offered to drive, but he had some things to catch up on in the office, and his driving her to Stillwater and then back into the city didn’t make much sense. He’d taken her back to the café to pick up her jeep, and the quiet had given Nikki time to think.

At the very least, John had lied to her about knowing Janelle. Nikki had been careful about the information she’d shared with the Bankses, but if John had killed Madison and Kaylee, he was close enough to the investigation to realize that another murder would be a good distraction.

Was he capable of such horrible things? An hour ago, Nikki would have insisted he wouldn’t have hurt anyone. But her conversation with Rory changed everything.

After the trial, she had worked hard to bury her memories of that night, training her mind to immediately discard any snippet that might break through. They were just blurry blips of memory, and most of them never made any sense. Nikki had always blamed it on the trauma she’d experienced, but what if Rory was right? What if she’d been drugged?

John had gone to college on a track scholarship. In high school, he’d been the state champion in the 800 meters and anchored a winning relay team his senior year. Nikki remembered John saying his first two years running college track had been average. But he was determined to be a top-five runner his last two years. Hearing that he used performance enhancers wouldn’t surprise Nikki. But she rarely refused him for sex, so why drug her? And would he have known what the GHB could do if she were already intoxicated?

Nikki had been a junior in college when the date rape drug became national news and a big issue for college campuses. As a resident advisor, she’d worried one of her girls would end up a victim. She and another RA worked together to account for every girl on their respective floors, and as far as Nikki knew, nothing happened to any of her residents.

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